The New Orleans-shot romance "The Lucky One" is, above all, a Nicholas Sparks movie, which -- ever since 1999's "Message in a Bottle" -- has become a Kleenex-devouring genre all itself. As such, there are certain things you can expect from it.

Taylor Schilling and Zac Efron star in the moss-draped romance 'The Lucky One,' based on a novel by Nicholas Sparks and shot in the New Orleans area in late 2010.

It will be picturesque and it will be sentimental, and it will touch deeply its teary-eyed, tender-hearted target audience -- while their boyfriends grunt their manly disapproval into their popcorn buckets.

That's because, as with its gooey, smoochy predecessors, "The Lucky One" is, beneath it all, a fairy-tale romance, just one with modern trappings. Instead of horse-drawn carriages, towering castles and fairy godmothers, we get rusty pickup trucks, clapboard cottages and brassy old ladies befitting the film's Louisiana setting (changed from the novel's North Carolina setting).

There are white knights, though (Zac Efron this time), and a damsel in distress (Taylor Schilling). And, of course, plenty of bibbity-bobbidy-boo-hooing by the time it's all done.

Directed by Scott Hicks ("No Reservations," "The Boys Are Back"), it starts during the Iraq war, where Efron's Marine character -- with the very Louisiana name of Logan Thibault -- finds a photo of a certain fetching blonde lying in the desert dust. Soon after, he cheats death. And then he does it again. That leads him to conclude one thing: The mystery woman in the photo obviously is his guardian angel.

Flash-forward eight months, and Thibault is back stateside, where he decides to track down this mystery woman. He does it on foot, too, setting out from Colorado and walking to Louisiana. He doesn't do this because it makes sense, necessarily, but because this is a Nicholas Sparks novel, and that's the sort of inexplicably romantic thing that Nicholas Sparks heroes do.

Thibault ends up finding his angel -- a kennel owner named Beth and played by Schilling -- and suddenly realizes how weird and stalker-y the whole found-picture thing sounds. Rather than telling her, he takes a job working for Beth and her grandmother (Blythe Danner) at the quaint but short-handed kennel as he figures out his approach.

Sparks devotees should know exactly where this story is headed: There will be friction at first. That will give way to the exchange of longing looks. That, in turn, will be followed by such lines such as, "You should be kissed every day, every hour, every minute."

And then there will be friction of a whole other kind.

Despite the at-times clumsy dubbing and the occasional tin-ear delivery of lines, Hicks' film looks nice enough. Obvious care was taken to use the film's eternally setting sun to highlight Schilling's hair, Efron's eyes -- even the fur of Efron's German shepherd co-star.

Unfortunately, as the plot unfolds, it begins to feel every bit as contrived. Instead of exploring perhaps the most interesting part of Efron's character -- the emotional scars from the war -- Sparks and Hicks instead entangle him in a melodrama involving Beth's moppet son, her abusive ex-husband and a perfunctory exploration of fate. It all leads up to a forced third-act crescendo that would be more dramatic if it weren't so ridiculous.

Snapshot: A New Orleans-shot, Nicholas Sparks-penned drama about a Marine who, after returning from a Mideast deployment, sets out to find the unnamed mystery woman whose picture he feels kept him safe while overseas.